For years, everything I believed about American politics could be summed up in the following Gore Vidal bon mot:
America’s not the only one party system, but it’s the only one party system with two right wings.”
That more or less held true till the Dubbya years, when one of the wings went so far right it was no longer accurately described as a political party as much as a social movement fueled by Christian conservatism and funded by corporate interests.
Fortunately, another political aphorism arrived just in time for the 2008 presidential election, this one by humorist David Sedaris, who described people not committed to voting for Barack Obama thusly:
I think of being on an airplane. The flight attendant comes down the aisle with her food cart and, eventually, parks it beside my seat. “Can I interest you in the chicken?” she asks. “Or would you prefer the platter of s#$t with bits of broken glass in it?”
To be undecided in this election is to pause for a moment and then ask how the chicken is cooked.
Yes, there is our reigning chicken-in-chief, Obama, who is, well, not as great as we might have hoped and then there are the guys, who are the other stuff.
Consider this bit of “not chicken” released today and written by candidate Newt in 1993:
For poor minorities, entrepreneurship in small business is the key to future wealth… This is understood thoroughly by most of the Asians, partially by Latinos, and to a tragically small degree by much of the American black community.”
Okay, as far as political aphorisms for the crazy GOP guys go, this is not even the worst. There was “Spanish is the language of the ghetto” and “child labor laws are stupid” and wouldn’t it be good to put poor kids to work as “assistant janitors and their job was to mop the floor and clean the bathroom?”
All of which makes Mitt look more like chicken and less like the other stuff. Except even members of his own party are having trouble rallying behind Candidate Helmut Hair, despite the fact that he’s outspending his rivals 20:1 in Florida. Of course, for a man who earned 45 MILLION in just two years, has a networth of a quarter of a billion dollars, bets $10,000 at a time, and describes his speaking fees of $374,000 as “not very much,” spending money doesn’t really cost him a lot. What does cost Romney is his inability to have anything like empathy for the 99% of Americans who do not have such “titanic wealth.”
Indeed, it is Romney’s “let them eat cake” attitude that seems to be sinking his presidential campaign, if not his fortune. With statements like ”corporations are people” and “I like being able to fire people” slipping through his barely mobile lips, Romney doesn’t even need his Mormon beliefs to make him look outside the mainstream.
Which leaves us in need of the perfect aphorism as a response to the crazy ones coming our way from the GOP candidates. I await the fabulously gay wit, the new Vidal or Sedaris, who will deliver it to us. In the meantime, please, eat the chicken.
